AI Business Manifesto Live - August 25 2026

Hello, hello, hello. Let me just make sure that Instagram is on.

Sure that it is. All right, I think it's live now. Should be at least. There we go.

And so how's it going, everyone? I'm actually in my backyard right now. Decided that to do it from here instead of my office, partly because Kim needs to go out and I'm gonna need to watch the dog. So figured dog can get into a lot less trouble out here than she can in my office. Let me know if you guys can hear me. And it's nice to see you, Sean. And Sean asked, Could I share how I met Jay Abraham and how he became my mentor? Yeah, sure. Why not?

The—

so I first was a customer of Jay's, and I bought— Janet Schweitzer actually introduced me to Jay Abraham. She was someone who worked for Jay for a while and created some of his products. She was like a product creator, a really smart woman. She introduced me to Jay's work. She gave me like Your Marketing Genius, like a product of his, and I read through it and I was really impressed and became a fan of Jay's. And then at that time, he had just introduced PEQ, and this is in the 1990s, and, um, it was $5,000 for like this set of videotapes, and that is probably the equivalent today of like, I don't know, like $25,000 for a set of videotapes. And I couldn't get my head around a set of videotapes being worth that much. But I so wanted to know some of the things that the sales letter was saying, you know, this course would teach you. So I bought it, embarrassingly, the only thing in my life that I ever did this with, but I bought it with the intent to return it. and possibly even copy it. But it was so good that I was like, I can't do that. So I decided to keep it. And several months later, Jay came out with PEQ2, and that was $7,500. But if you had bought them for PEQ1 for $5,000, it would only be an extra $2,500. And I wanted it, so I paid another $2,500. Then they came out with PEQ3. That was a $10,000 course. And if you wanted that one, you just had to pay, and you had bought 1 and 2, then you only had to pay the $2,500 difference. And so that was the first kind of pass-through of a Jay product that I had bought. And, um, that's why it's not uncommon for people in my programs to buy Zenith for $1,000, then upgrade to Zenith Mind Elite for another $1,500 because it's $2,500, then take that $2,500, it comes to like connect the dots and apply that $2,500. I do the same thing. Learned it from Jay. Anyway, so many months later, Jay had an offer that you could pay for his consulting in installments. So he normally charges $5,000 an hour, so it'd still be $5,000 an hour, but you could get the advice upfront, right? Either 2 hours or 4 hours, and then just pay $1,000 a month. And so if you bought 2 hours, it'd be $10,000. If you bought, um, 4 hours, it would be $20,000. I bought 4 hours and decided to fly out there so I could actually meet him. And I actually brought him like 2 autographed basketballs for his sons, one from Shaquille O'Neal and whoever the other big Laker was at the time. I don't really follow basketball. And, um, Had a great conversation with him, learned a lot, and I would share that another day. Um, and then mid— like, after paying him for 3 months, my American Express Black Card got cut off because this was after 9/11, and that's when my hypnosis business had some challenges. And so then Jay was thinking that he was getting screwed by me. Uh, probably Kobe Bryant. Yeah. Uh, Jay thought he was getting screwed by me, right? That I had only paid him for 3 months, $3,000 of this $20,000, and, uh, that he was getting screwed over because his experience has been once someone stops paying, he never gets paid. And I told him I was going through a really tough time, but that I promised him that when I got on my feet, he would be first in line. And, uh, he would call me and bother me about owing him money, like, on a pretty frequent basis, which I don't really this day understand. He doesn't remember it, so he can't explain it. And anyway, um, you know, once I got reorganized and actually like, uh, released the course to all the other hypnosis centers that were in the world, which were only 35 of them, uh, and got back on my feet, I had the money. So I was invited to Mark Joyner's like last internet marketing seminar as a guest because I had a friend who was like involved. And, uh, so I flew out there to California for that and then stopped by Jay's office. He wasn't there. But I left him a check for $17,000 with a note that said, you know, I told you I'd get you your money, and now you're well over a year ahead of schedule, because it was like another 3 months. So, you know, I paid him the 17 grand, but he probably— I would have still owed him at least like $13,000 by that point. So now he had it all. I paid him off. And he then reached out to me and said, um, to thank me and to say that he knew I was that kind of person and that's why he was so shocked, and that, uh, I should, uh, keep him in mind if I ever do anything interesting. Fast forward many years later when I'm on the internet and I joined a coaching program by Steven Pearce because he was a big guru at that time. I went to Steven and said, would you be interested in doing a project with Jay Abraham? And he said yes, he would. And so I then went to Jay and said, like, this guy is really hot online right now. I think it's time for you to really start getting present online. And, uh, so we should do something.

And he agreed.

And then we did, uh, a teleseminar series. And that teleseminar series then turned into a coaching program. And that coaching program did really well for the next 2 years. And then Steven and Jay had a falling out. And that's when I launched my own coaching. And I guess you could could say the rest is history. I have— I, from that point, right after being a partner of Jay's, I partnered with him on many projects, including a bunch of clients. Jay and I used to have a program together that we charged $1 million for. And it was You paid a $50,000 nonrefundable deposit that got you 6 months, and we got 4% of the increase in gross until you paid off the million dollars. So after we helped you make an extra $25 million, you gave us, you know, paid us, had paid us off the million. And, um, we've done a lot of stuff together and over the years, and I've just gravitated towards them Probably because in a scary way, my mind works a lot like, like his. And Jay has generated a lot of wealth in his life, but has always been challenged, really growing his own business in a lot of ways that I've been as well. I feel like I've crossed that, I've crossed that burden. I have like a really good team right now. And so it really, it was really phenomenal to have both Jay and Mark, you know, here 2 days ago, just because of everything I told you yesterday. And I hope you guys did what I said yesterday. That. And, uh, so Mahatma, um, Mahatma asked, uh, are you able to show your command center in action? Tell it to run a skill and show it how it decides and creates. I'd love to do that. Let's do that another day when I'm not here in my— out, you know, my patio, but, um, when I'm in front of my desk, which is most days. Just happens to be today that I decided to take it from the pool. Um, the But I hope you guys did what I recommended, because I did. And for those that weren't on yesterday, what I was talking about was going into ChatGPT anonymously and asking ChatGPT a question that you want to be the answer for. And odds are you won't be. And so then that gives you this nice long runway to have a long conversation about the top, the area, who's a player in it, what they're doing to be a player in it, and have it ultimately take you down a path that, um, can give you a lot of clarity, uh, strategically on where you should be going forward. So I did this yesterday and it was immensely, immensely valuable. And let me explain why, and maybe in the explanation as to why It will resonate with you in a way that maybe it's not yet. So what I want you to understand about me, which will be helpful for this, under like explanation, is that who I was in 2006, in May of 2006. In May of 2006, I was the only business coach online, but I was just a coach. That's it. You know, I had my clients, but I was no different than most coaches. And then I wrote The Internet Business Manifesto hoping to get like 8,000 clients. And, you know, I got so much more than that. And then because that was so successful, I then followed that up with another 6 reports over the next 18 months or so. And that work that I did, which was not strategic like that— I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote The Internet Business Manifesto— um, had me ultimately go from a coach to being something so much more than that, with some— with something so much more substantial than that, all because I had created like a worldview and I had created a category and I had created a set of definitions that people took on. and a way of perceiving things. And this, like, was intentional from the standpoint that it was emergent, that I saw opportunities to kind of extend the message and get it out there and kind of make myself about something bigger than prior. But it wasn't all planned at all. It was all emergent, like, I kind of like finding my way through the dark. And so So by going into ChatGPT anonymously and talking about where I want to show up now in judgment and tacit knowledge and leveraging that in AI, I can have an amazing conversation about me anonymously where I'm asking AI to reconstruct the strategy that Rich Schefren is going to be doing if he's doing it all over again, but now he's doing it in 2026. If the AI Business Manifesto is just the first shot in what he did in the past, where he'll follow it up with a bunch of reports and a bunch of other things around it, what else is that going to look like? And then from there, like, what is he going to change about it? Because it's 2026. and people's attention spans and where they go and how to reach them is all different now. And that gives me better ideas than I'll ever get brainstorming with AI as it knows me, because there are certain things it won't say. There are certain— like, it doesn't want to offend. It's going to only say so much about what Rich Schefren has to overcome in my personal one versus what this free one is. And I happen to think the model that, for whatever reason, that ChatGPT is using in the free model is insanely great, like at least on all information type of stuff and conversationally. So I did that, then did the very same thing with Perplexity Computer, and Perplexity Computer doing it 2 ways, doing it the way ChatGPT did it, like all external trying to reverse engineer. And then Perplexity had the benefit of being tied into my system knowing that it was me, and it was like, why are you doing this? And I And I said, then do another version where you pull in all the stuff that is, um, that from my system that makes it more relevant. And what I got back was so insanely good. And so that's why I'm bringing this up again. In fact, I'd love to show you one right now. So let me see if I can do that. I think The first one is the one I wanna— yeah. All right, so let's see if I can just open and preview.

All right, and now see if I can share it. Um, share screen. Oh, I don't know if— okay, see if I can. Okay, we'll do that.

I don't know, I might not be able to share it. Until I restart. Yeah, and if I can't do that, obviously won't be able to.

But all right, let's see, does that allow me to—

maybe I can open it in Chrome.

So hold on, hold on, let's see if I go like this.

Documents.

So I go here, open documents, and where is this? All right, there we go.

Uh, almost there, guys.

Sorry, promise it might be worth it. Um, that's not the one. Where is it? Well, this is not— it's not— it's downloads.

Sorry guys, I know this doesn't make for great, uh, great airtime.

Um, there's What I found.

Where is the son of a bitch?

All right, hold on. Let me just export this or save this as duplicate. All right. All right, there we go.

Rich advice.

Can I do that? Move from desktop. Move. All right, where did that just move? This one.

Sorry guys.

Ah, all right, I don't think I'm gonna be able to do this. I wish I could.

Um, I'll do it tomorrow. But I can read it actually. So I could do that. And maybe I should just do that.

All right.

So why don't we do that?

All right.

So I'll read you this document. And just the like first little part, because I think you'll get what I— why I think it's valuable. And why I think you should do it, more importantly.

I just wish I could get this thing. There it is.

Okay, where is it? There it is. Okay, so there, open with, open with Google Chrome. There we go. All right, now I can do this. Now I can actually share it.

Okay. All right. So, Chrome, share screen, category creation playbook.

There we go.

All right.

Let me just see, make sure. All right, let's see, maybe this is better. Uh, can I make this bigger?

Make it bigger, can I? Uh, oh, that's too big, so let me remake that. All right, and, um, That's not bad. How it's doing that.

Okay, so let me now go to the actual page so I can see the category creation playbook.

Crap. Okay. What is this? What am I looking at here? There we go.

Alright, so, you know, read. So, okay, prescriptive 52-week sequence for owning the AI that knows you category and for running the same engine on the next one. Read part 1 once, read part 2 with a marker in hand, use part 3 as a weekly reference. All right, so I'm just going to read like the first page and then show you the diagram on the second page. You are not working from a checklist, you are running an engine. A checklist asks whether an item has been completed. An engine asks whether one force is producing the next. The distinction matters because category creation does not happen when you publish a strong diagnosis. Invent a clever phrase or schedule a launch. It happens when a diagnosis makes an enemy legible. The enemy makes an identity reversal necessary. The identity reversal makes a portable model valuable. The model gives people something to distribute. Distribution creates the event. The event produces implementers and validators, and their work creates external objects. Those objects make the diagnosis easier for the next person to discover. Each move supplies pressure to the next. Each move also hardens the prior one. So to just— in case you don't understand what that just said, it says, you know, you're not following a checklist where you're just checking off boxes because it's not about just taking the action. It's about whether or not that action produces the force necessary to trip the next key piece of these 8 pieces. So it doesn't— that doesn't happen when you just publish a strong diagnosis or you create some kind of clever phrase or you do some kind of launch. It happens when you create a diagnosis and when someone hears it, it makes the enemy that they have like obvious. It makes that identity that they need to change about themselves necessary. It makes that change in identity something that is portable, that is easily displayable, so that it gives people something to distribute to other people. By other people being exposed to it, it creates an event. The event creates people who implement and validate this idea. And because people are implementing and validating, that creates external proof points. Those external proof points make it easier for people to diagnose themselves and to discover it. So that's what that first paragraph said, right? So now, now back to the document. This is why you should never ask which comes first. All 8 are active from the moment you commit to category claim. You may reveal them in order, you may fund them in an order, you may build them with different teams and clocks, but you do not treat them as a relay race. You treat them as a flywheel with uneven speed. When one part is weak, the whole system announces the weakness somewhere else. So in other words, these are all interrelated, and when you're weak in one area, you're going to have to do extra work in another area. And then it gives me some examples of that. A vague diagnosis forces you to overcompensate with louder distribution. A weaker enemy makes the replacement identity feel like it's just a cosmetic rebrand. An identity with no model becomes motivational language that will not travel amongst people. A model with no event becomes just a private insight for someone. An event with no ladder produces attention but that attention won't compound because there's no place to go after that. A ladder with no validators becomes a closed loop or self-authored proof because there's no one out there making more proof to bring people in. Validators without externalized objects creates borrowed authority rather than durable category. So people who do go out and prove, if they don't create stuff, then we just have a lot of people saying wonderful stuff about me, but that doesn't create the category. External objects without a lived identity becomes disconnected technical debris. If I don't equate it back to someone and the way they see themselves, these are just a bunch of technical, like, tricks and strategies. So now the last paragraph. The test is not whether the manifesto sounds complete. The test is whether a stranger can enter the system at any point and still be pulled towards the same conclusion. The encounter— They encounter the phrase, it names a problem they recognize, they find a model, the model makes the problem visible, they meet someone who uses the identity, they find an artifact outside your site, they learn that there is a practical next step, and that system keeps teaching itself without requiring you to explain every connection. And so when you map it out, it looks like this. And this is the engine that I used in the past to create a category. By move 1, diagnosing this, you know, the surface of the failure. Move 2, naming the enemy. So in the Internet Business Manifesto, that was opportunity seeking, right? In, in the current AI Manifesto, it's the assembler, but I haven't built out the assembler as much as I've built out opportunity seekers. So I know I have to build that out more. Invert the identity. Right? From assembler to architect, from opportunity seeker to strategic entrepreneur. I have to do— after I have fully defined who an assembler is in a way that people see themselves in, then I have to paint the picture of how it is for the other side, right? Then move 4, portable model, right? A carryable artifact so that people can share, like post to their site, whatever. A distribution event, a manifesto scale drop, right? Like, I either reduce— I introduce these sub-reports or a video or whatever ladder up that there's a way to go to the next thing. Like, we just did an imprint challenge. Validator network, me pushing it out to all the people I know so that they can talk about it more, right? So I just hope that you see that I'm not, you know— And then it says here, I'll just read this last little thing here. You have already operated this engine once at scale in the June 22nd, 2006 Internet Business Manifesto cycle. The diagnosis was not a shortage of traffic or tactics. It was strategic absence expressed as opportunistic thinking. The enemy was the opportunity seeker, the imitation game, and the owner-centered pseudo-business. The replacement identity became the strategic entrepreneur. The U diagram turned an invisible structural defect into an object people could recognize in a second. The free report created the distribution event. The sequence into the missing chapter and the final chapter kept reopening the question, business growth system, and the later layers converted recognition into implementation. The Agora connection and the transfer and the broader direct response network widened the validator field. The language stayed alive because it was repeatedly attached to diagrams, reports, programs, and the way people describe their own behavior. And then it goes on, right? But hopefully, from what I read to you, you can understand that that is an analysis that would be hard to get almost anywhere. That it is better at analyzing what I did in the past than I can do. And then take what I did in the past, recognize the elements that really made it work, recognize that 2026 is very different than 2006, that 2006 you could— people would read a report, and that now that report was just really setting the overall structure or boundaries or the umbrella concepts that now I'm going to take much further. Because I want to do what I did back in 2006, from the standpoint that what I did in 2006 was go from a standard coach that nobody knew to something so much bigger and more present than that. I want to do the same thing in AI, and I want to do it around judgment and tacit knowledge and preference and capturing that from the entrepreneur. Or executive and building out AI around that. So that— what that— so I generated 4 different documents like that last night from 4 different perspectives. One from inside my machine, that was the one I was reading you. One from totally outside my machine, and that one's really valuable too, but takes a very different perspective on it, but gives the most honest because it's doesn't know that it's talking to me. And then another one that looked at anything and everything out there as it relates to judgment and perception and point of view and discernment and taste, and looked at Atlas and Imprint. And if I wanted to out Sheffrin Sheffrin, and how— what would I need to put on top of that to make this whole system much more valuable? And who is closest to that? And what can we learn from everything that's been created everywhere? And so each of these are like 200 pages, right? The one I showed you, the other 2, and then I have a summary document. And that was insanely helpful. In fact, the free chat that I did that whole thing with did all of the build documents too, including all the PRDs. So now, like, when I want to build that new layer, It's all been thought out for free, no tokens. Nice. So the— so that's like what I wanted to share with you today. And I guess it's 12:31, so it's a perfect time to kind of wrap. But that's how I got to know Jay. I disappointed him because he thought he was getting screwed, and then I proved otherwise. And I brought him, you know, I, I've been a source of intellectual kind of dispersion for him, just like I have been for Mark. You know, some of his books, he thanks me in the front of them, like The Sticking Point Solution was based on a bunch of my work, and a few of his other books as well. I get Jay to think at a higher level sometimes, and he does that for me all the time. The And, you know, it was the same. And I brought him to Japan where he's made millions of dollars, just like I brought Mark, and just like I gave Mark Ready Fire Aim and everything else. So, uh, there you go, guys. So I hope you have a wonderfully profitable day. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for being here. Um, tomorrow I'll be back in my office, and if you want me to build something for you, just let me know. And I can also show you how I run my command center. and all that kind of stuff as well. And I, for those of you that come back all the time, I have a really interesting story that I'll share tomorrow if someone reminds me. And it's the— it's a story about Me and Jay Abraham, me and a copywriter named Harlan Kilstein, and the absolute optimal way to deal with— the optimal way to profit when somebody disappoints you. And the worst way to respond that actually makes things 10 times worse. So someone disappoints you. I have a really great story about same sort of scenario. One person responds in a way that makes them a tremendous amount of money. And maintains the relationship. One person responds in a different way, ends up making way less than they would have made, like by a factor of at least 10, and also permanently damaged the relationship. So if someone reminds me of that, I'll tell that story. Juicy gossip kind of story. some of you might find really interesting. And of course, the preference will be on AI. And for those that weren't here yesterday, I was recapping having Jay Abraham here for the Connect the Dots that we did this past weekend. And then Mark Ford showing up because, you know, he's a neighbor of mine as well as being a mentor. And just having Jay and Mark there was something truly special to me because These are the 2 people I've learned the most from over the years. So with that, make today profitable to higher profits beyond. I'll see you tomorrow. Rich Schefren, over and out.